The first quarry q-7

by Max Allan Collins

  Around six-thirty, already dark as midnight but with a nearly full moon washing the snow an ivory-blue, the student exited-a skinny kid in a gray parka and jeans and galoshes. His nest of facial hair stuck out like a porcupine was sitting on his face. A porcupine with granny glasses on its ass. The prof stayed in the doorway and watched his charge stride toward the Corvair with the confidence of a Lafayette Escadrille pilot about to go up after the Red Baron. I figured his odds of getting home were about the same.

  That left the prof alone in his cottage, and me wondering if I should spend a couple of more days updating the obviously flawed surveillance info I’d been given, before laying my ass on the line. Maybe Annette hadn’t moved out-maybe she’d skedaddled to the shopping mall over on the southeast side, to kill time while Professor Loverboy dealt with a student who was presumably stopping by to deliver breathless prose and not a blowjob.

  By that reasoning, the brunette might wander in right when I was fulfilling the contract. If all I had to do was pop this fucker, that might be worth the risk-I could be in and out in minutes. But I had that extra assignment of rounding up certain manuscript pages and disposing of them-that “challenge” Broker had given me, as his new boy.

  An hour went by and no Annette. The radio station had cycled through its playlist for the fourth or fifth time, and “American Woman” was back on when I decided to do something more than sit on my ass. I had Annette’s address, which was in Coralville, a small suburb to the west of Iowa City. I drove there.

  She was on the second floor of a little modern redbrick apartment complex, six apartments up, five down, all with exterior entrances, the walkway above providing the first floor with an overhang. A laundry room on the lower level seemed to be the only shared living experience here.

  The apartment facility was just a block off Coralville’s busy retail and restaurant strip, an artery pumping monetary life’s blood into the little suburb. And I was able to park in the lot of a Sambo’s restaurant on the corner, the Maverick nosed in against the cement-block six-foot wall that separated the restaurant from its residential next-door neighbor, but with a clear view of Annette’s digs. She was on the second floor, apartment 204, with her white Corvette parked in a specified spot in the complex’s tiny parking lot.

  The curtained windows of her apartment glowed yellow. She was in there, maybe writing. She had to produce material for her advisor to advise her over, right? For maybe an hour, I sat watching those windows, figuring if she stayed in her nest until, say, midnight, she wasn’t likely to go back out and rejoin the prof.

  This wasn’t scientific. I was learning on the job, which is to say making it up as I went along. But I was giving serious thought to making tonight the night- drive back to my split-level and go over to the cobblestone cottage and get this the fuck over with. The longer I hung around, it seemed, the more wild cards were getting played. In a game like that, you either play what’s dealt you and hope for the best, or you get the hell away from the table.

  And what would the Broker say if I bailed on my very first contract? Not only would I be a disappointment to my new employer, I’d be an instant loose end. This wasn’t the kind of job, wasn’t the kind of business, where you can apply, get a position, discover you’re not right for it, shake hands with the boss and say thanks anyway and go along your merry way, until the next position came along. No. I knew the Broker was a middleman in the murder business, and that was dangerous information to possess, in and of itself. On top of that, I knew about the Concort Inn and could extrapolate that the Quad Cities was Broker’s base of operations.

  If I didn’t want to go through with this, I would have to disappear and leave behind my A-frame on the lake and money in the bank and still risk getting shot to shit by some asshole sent by the Broker.

  Amway and the Jehovah’s Witnesses were looking better all the time.

  I’d been watching maybe another half hour when she came out of her apartment and trotted down the central staircase, a big white purse on a strap over her shoulder. Again she was in the white leather coat with the white fur collar; her bell bottoms were dark blue with black polka dots that didn’t show till she’d crossed the street and walked right past where I was parked.

  I watched her go into the Sambo’s.

  What the hell. I went in after her. I hadn’t eaten since the pizza at the Airliner.

  The restaurant had a motif based on the old children’s book about little black Sambo chasing tigers around a tree until they turned into butter, which must have seemed like a fun concept for a chain of pancake houses until Black Power came along. The Sambo kid on the menus and in decorative art in this aggressively bright orange-and-white restaurant was not black, rather some vague turbaned Oriental type, like that wouldn’t offend somebody in a college town like Iowa City.

  The place was damn near empty, Sunday night during break, a few families in booths and a couple of truck drivers at the endless counter, with the young waiters and waitresses in their orange outfits and caps stricken with that hollow expression that says, How did my life bottom out so soon?

  I took a counter seat and ordered some eggs and pancakes and sausage and iced tea. I was able from here to see Annette, seated by herself in a corner booth, reading a book whose title was Armies of the Night; I wasn’t actually seated close enough to see that, but I’d picked up on it when I walked past her.

  Her coat was off-the heat was going at a pretty good clip here in the tropical world of Sambo’s-and she had on a black sweater that made the polka dots on the purple slacks stand out more; her smallish breasts under the sweater were doing a swell job, considering. She wasn’t eating anything, at least not yet, just working on a cup of black coffee.

  She seemed fairly engrossed in the book. I had my eggs, sausage and pancakes, “tiger butter” and all, and decided to take a risk. Maybe it was the sugar rush.

  On my way to the counter to pay my bill, I stopped at her booth and asked, “How is that?”

  She glanced up from her paperback, not at all irritated by the interruption, and said in a nice throaty alto, “Do you like Norman Mailer?”

  “I’ve only read Naked and the Dead,” I said, which was true. I read it in high school back when I thought war sounded like a heroic thing for a kid to get involved in. Mailer’s opinion had been different, and now so was mine, although he hadn’t had anything to do with it.

  “Well, he’s a completely out of control egotist,” she said. “Or perhaps I should say ego- ist.”

  Was there a difference? Not if you hadn’t been to college there wasn’t.

  She was saying, “But he may be onto something here-referring to himself in the third person and all.”

  I nodded toward the book in her scarlet-nailed hands. “Isn’t that non-fiction? Something about the march on the Pentagon?”

  “Yes. But it’s a non-fiction novel, or at least it’s trying to be. I don’t know if he’s really successful here, but it’s interesting to see him try. I really think this is the future.”

  “Yeah. Of what?”

  She beamed at me in a winning combination of embarrassment and confidence. “Of the novel. Of journalism. I don’t know really, but something new.”

  “Does sound interesting.”

  I smiled and nodded, and she smiled and nodded back and returned to her book, and I went on outside and climbed into the Maverick and got the heat going.

  No way to know how long Mailer’s book and Sambo’s coffee would hold her interest; no way to know if she’d be heading back to her place or the prof’s cottage, after. I could sit here and wait and watch to see when she emerged, five minutes or two hours from now, but if she noticed me, that would be bad. That was the downside of getting friendly with my target’s best girl. I couldn’t think of an upside, incidentally. I just kind of liked her looks.

  Less than half an hour later I was back at the old stand. The space heater was doing fine and in fact was making me a little sleepy; well, the space heater
and those pancakes-blame the tiger butter. A car belonging to another of those male Writers’ Workshop students was parked in front of the cobblestone pad, meaning a legit advisory session was again under way.

  This meant Annette might be staying away just until these meetings were over. Another half an hour dragged by and I was sipping some cocoa from the thermos lid-cup when I heard a crinkling sound. Now this new house had plastic down on the floors, but I had rolled the living room sheet back to give me a nice space by and around the window where I could sit on carpet and not on cold crinkly plastic. I mention this because the plastic could also serve as an early warning system, alerting me to somebody else moving through this house.

  Of course, I would have to have been fully awake and not trying to maintain surveillance with my head up my ass, and when I removed my head from that orifice and turned, I was facing a guy with a gun. Which is to say, I wasn’t facing him with my gun, he was facing me with his, a little. 38 Police Special with a snub nose, a dinky nothing that could kill you deader than Jimi and Janis.

  He was short and dark and pudgy with Nixon jowls and tiny dark eyes and an awful bulb of a nose. He had no hat on a mostly bald noggin, though the hair he did have was longish, enough so that he had sideburns, not quite mutton chops but close. He was in a tan trench-coat that had a lumpiness indicating it was heavily lined; and brown slacks and brown rubber-soled shoes.

  He was grinning, not a very wide grin, but a toothy Bucky Beaver thing that gave him a hint of childish glee. Whoever he was, he figured he’d really put one over on me.

  Which he had.

  “Just take it easy, kid,” he said. His voice was a fairly squeaky tenor, not at all impressive, except for belonging to a guy with a gun.

  The nine millimeter was in my waistband but my corduroy jacket was zipped. Maybe I could slip my hand up and under and get at the weapon; and maybe not. Probably not.

  “Why don’t you come over here, kid,” he said, and motioned with the. 38. “Get away from the windows.”

  “I’m okay where I am.”

  “No, really, you aren’t. I’m not going to shoot you.”

  “Then put the gun down.”

  “Not till we’re better acquainted. I think we might work for the same team…well, not the same team. But maybe affiliated teams, you know?”

  I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know. I did get to my feet and I walked over to the half of the living room still covered in plastic, my footsteps crinkling it this time. I faced him but kept my distance, maybe four feet.

  “Listen, kid,” he said, regret in his voice but the Bucky Beaver grin still going, “I gotta pat you down.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  His eyes got hard and the grin vanished; his mouth was a puckery thing in the five o’clock-shadowed face, an anus that wandered off course. “You put your hands up, kid, and stand for a frisk. Be a good boy. I been at this longer than you. I got ties older than you.”

  That I believed.

  I put my hands up. I was ready to bring them down on him, but he was experienced, I’ll give him that. When he got close, he shoved the snout of the revolver in my side and with his free hand unzipped my coat.

  “Now that’s a weapon,” he said admiringly of the nine millimeter in my waistband. He plucked the gun like a metal flower and dropped it in a trenchcoat pocket and backed up a couple steps.

  Was I dead?

  “Let me guess,” he said genially. “You’re working for the father.”

  “Am I?”

  His somewhat Neanderthal brow wrinkled. “Don’t answer questions with questions. It’s annoying.”

  “Is it?”

  The bucktooth grin again. “You have a sense of humor. That’s good. Because people with senses of humor, they have a certain love of life. What is it the French say?”

  “ Merde?”

  “ Joie de vivre. And people with a love of life don’t take stupid chances, particularly when they don’t have to. I don’t wanna kill you, kid. Really I don’t. It would be a real pain in my keister, and neither would I want to piss off the girl’s father.”

  “Who would?”

  He chuckled. “You know, you’re pretty good. I didn’t spot you till today. How many days you been here?”

  “This is the second.”

  “Well, I’ve been on the job for three days. I’m in the split-level house across the way. I saw you take your car out earlier this evening. That’s maybe not a good idea in the daylight.”

  “You may be right.”

  “Who do you think I’m working for?”

  “Not the girl’s father.” That’s all I could think of to say-my information was limited.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head in agreement, “not the girl’s father, which is a pity.”

  “Is it?”

  His tiny glittery eyes tightened. His nose was really ugly, with veins and blackheads and whiteheads in the crevices. And those beaver teeth were yellow, probably from smoking, because he stank of it. Death is never pretty, but did I really have to get killed by somebody this unpleasant?

  He moved just a little closer. The gun-in-hand was angled away just a shade, to make me feel less threatened, I guess, and more like we were pals. Or anyway, business associates. Affiliated teams and all.

  “The wife has money,” he said confidentially. “I mean, the prof has done fairly well, hasn’t he? Movie sale on that book of his, a big advance for this opus he’s knocking out now.”

  So he was working for the professor’s wife-that made sense: a philandering husband can attract the likes of this bucktoothed frog.

  “You’re a private eye,” I said.

  He reared back with a blink and a grin. “Yeah, of course I’m a PI. Like you are. That is, unless you’re just one of daddy’s regular helpers, which you don’t look like in the least. Anyway, he’s all tied up with that nigger problem, ain’t he?”

  “Yeah. Fuckin’ spooks.” What the hell was he talking about?

  He sighed, shook his head. “You know, those Italians think Chicago is their birthright, and when a bunch of uppity spades start moving in on the dope business, things can get hairy.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “But if we know one thing about these Outfit wops, it’s that they are rolling in dough. Illegal dough, sure, but dough don’t know where it comes from.”

  “Right.”

  “Like I said, the wife has money. But the girl’s father has real money.”

  “No argument.”

  He moved his weight from one brown shoe to the other. “Hey. This is awkward. I mean…we’re gonna be friends, kid. What’s your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “And I’m Charlie.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Charlie.” I extended my hand but he didn’t take it-his right hand was busy pointing a gun at me, after all. “What kind of friendship are we going to have?”

  “The business kind. Let’s go out in the kitchen and sit down and make this nice and friendly and non-hostile, shall we?”

  “Sure. After you.”

  He horse-laughed, flecking my face with spittle. “Naw, Jack, I think you’ll lead the way. Sense of humor. Kid’s got a sense of humor…”

  The kitchen, a modern, spacious white-and-gray affair, had no plastic on the floor, just linoleum. A breakfast nook with a little table in a booth right out of a restaurant was off to one side, with a window that let in moonlight. He motioned me in and then slid in and sat across from me, his hand with the. 38 on the table, casual but ready, like a fork in his fist as he anticipated a meal.

  “Now, let’s think about this,” he said in that genial if squeaky tenor. “We have clients with similar interests, right? Both of them want that cheating prick of a professor hung out to dry by his gonads.”

  “Agreed.”

  His round head tilted. “But there are places where we overlap, our interests…and places where we don’t overlap. Would you agree on th
at point, too?”

  “I may not be following you.”

  He shrugged. Frowned, dark little pellet eyes narrowing. “My client, the wife, wants evidence on this horny asshole, so she can divorce his unfaithful ass and get as much of his loot as possible.”

  “Oh…kay.”

  With his free hand, he gestured grandiosely. “And I have photos that demonstrate this fact-some that catch him naked as a jaybird…with females the same buck nekkid way.”

  “You didn’t get that from sitting across the street. Through a window, huh? Up close and personal?”

  “Yeah-I got him through his study window and his bedroom, too.” He leaned across a little. “You know, this guy likes to gets blown more than he wants to get fucked; he likes to sit in his chair in that study and have those sweet young things worship his cock.”

  “Better than no religion at all, I guess.”

  He snorted his laugh and I backed up a little, in hopes of avoiding spittle; no such luck. “You’re a funny kid, Jack. That sense of humor. I just knew we were gonna be tight.”

  “So you have photos of Annette and Byron.”

  He leaned back; the grin widened again, his pride palpable. “Damn straight. But I also got photos of him and a little blonde. Which is where things get interesting.”

  I frowned. “You mean, that girl Alice, who tore the professor a new asshole yesterday?”

  “Yeah. He was banging her the morning before. Or she was blowing him or whatever. Anyway, she was in there with him, and they kissed in the doorway for about a month, before she left in her little car, happy as a clam. And then that afternoon, the brunette showed.”

  “This is the day before yesterday?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she stay the night, Annette?”

  “No. But she did last night.” He smiled cannily. “You knew that, though.”

  “Yeah. Just trying to get a pattern down.” I shook my head. “It’s Grand Central Station around here.”